“Training has become a medicine for me”: Babikov - about skipping the Olympics, career sacrifices and the art of being a coach

- Your appearance at the first of the January stages of the Russian Cup in Demino is a perfect illustration of the famous phrase of Julius Caesar: "I came, I saw, I conquered."

Why did they ignore the first two days of the competition at that stage?

“It’s not about my desire to save energy or anything else.

I just followed the coaching plan.

When, even before the start of the season, Sergei Bashkirov, Dmitry Shukalovich, and I were planning training camps, it was decided to hold one of them from December 30 to January 17 in Ufa.

It's just that we didn't think then that the Russian Cup could turn out to be so "dense" and that each start would have such significance.

Do you mean score points?

- Not only.

A lot of spectators traditionally come to biathlon competitions and at some point you start to think that someone can do it for you.

Of course, the pass is not a personal prerogative.

Everyone understands that you have to complete a certain training plan in order to save yourself for the main starts.

With this approach, you can’t run all the time in competitions, you need to find time for voluminous training.

Moreover, the end of January turned out to be very dense for us, even without taking into account the starts in Rybinsk.

But at the training camp in Ufa, some guys began to slip such phrases: “Maybe we should still go?”

Yes, and the regions began to recommend doing this.

So I came, although initially I did not intend to.

I will not say that the decision was spontaneous, but it was made after the New Year.

- Larisa Kuklina, who won the final race in Rybinsk, said: "

- It's really really hard.

Those who made such a schedule should have understood that athletes simply would not be able to physically take part in all starts without exception.

Therefore, I myself ran in Rybinsk for only two final races.

- For those who are approaching the national team, it probably doesn’t make much difference where to compete.

But absolutely everything has already happened in your career: you are a world champion, a four-time European champion, you have won personal races at the World Cup.

With such a track record, how to get rid of the feeling of some kind of inferiority of the current season?

And do you have this feeling?

- Sometimes this slips in my thoughts, of course, but I have already said many times: we all love our work very much, not because it makes it possible to travel abroad and not even for medals.

For me personally, the training process with all its hardships remained an equally strong motivation.

I liked being one of the best during the summer training, even if not everything worked out later on the snow.

All the same, I wanted to, and even now I constantly want to prove that you did all this training work for a reason.

And for this, any starts are good.

- Does it become more difficult to prove with age?

— I wouldn't say.

It is still a process of constant search: to understand what limited you in this or that race, what can be improved, what can be improved.

Often the cause is not one's own condition, but some external factor, for example, skiing or weather.

- I meant something else.

In recent years, biathlon has changed markedly in terms of running technique and shooting speed.

Agree, the older the athlete, the more difficult it is to adapt to these changes.

- I, probably, was lucky in a certain sense: I caught a time when shooting began to change quite fundamentally in biathlon and was one of the first to start working at the turn quickly - I always knew how to do it.

In this regard, biathlon has not changed much for me.

It's more about concentration, about what kind of shooting to choose in a particular race, and this is where experience begins to play a huge role, allowing you to make decisions quickly.

In terms of skiing, I agree: we see that quite a few guys have appeared who have a technique close to ideal.

Previously, this was not given such importance, but now you have to devote a lot of time and effort to economizing your equipment.

It's not the time to be able to travel only on strength or functional readiness - the competition has grown too much.

Any biathlete who achieves high results knows how to run well.

- And you?

- I am not in the leading positions in this aspect, but I try to keep up.

Moreover, young people are urging them on - the same Karim Khalili or Daniil Serokhvostov.

The guys come with a different technique, more advanced, so in some ways, of course, it’s easier for them.

Well, for us, "oldies", this is another task that needs to be dealt with.

- It turns out that you need to do a lot more work to reprogram yourself in terms of muscle memory, get rid of the old skills.

- Yes it is.

But the main thing is that in this process there is nothing that would be beyond your control.

Everything can be changed.

That's why I don't worry.

Cyclic sports are good because success, up to Olympic victories, is often achieved by athletes in adulthood, older than me.

— Over the course of your career, you have managed to work with a huge number of specialists.

Can you pick the top three?

- Uh ... Let's take only functional coaches, so that it's easier to compare them with each other.

I would put Andrey Padin in the first place, Dmitry Shukalovich in the second and Artyom Istomin in the third.

As they say, both experience and youth.

- Since the coaching staff of the women's and men's teams has undergone such a strong change in favor of young professionals, I constantly ask myself the question: in what way are they better than their predecessors?

- I would not argue here from the position of "better - worse."

At one time I had a chance to work with Alexander Kasperovich in the junior team, and I remember to what extent I admired his work.

In general, I think that those years became a kind of golden springboard for everyone who passed through his hands.

Shukalovich and Istomin differ from the older coaching generation primarily in that, while working in the national team, they constantly continue to learn.

They explore not only biathlon as such, but also new trends in the approach to the training process in different sports.

They analyze the training methods of Norwegian triathletes, for example.

They have an endless stream of energy in this regard: I have never seen anyone complain about being tired from their own work.

It is clear that somewhere there is not enough experience, but the future of our sport is absolutely with such specialists.

- When you watch the work of Shukalovich and Istomin, are you not drawn to the coaching path yourself?

- I see how we differ from each other and I understand that in some things I will never keep up with them.

— And in what?

- Both Dmitry and Artyom did not become professional athletes at one time - they left early enough in sports science, which has always interested them.

That is, in the training process, people tell you what to do, not from the standpoint of their own experience, but taking into account the analysis of the most effective methods and developments.

I have too much experience of my own performances.

If I start working as a coach, I will involuntarily begin to transfer into work everything that I did myself.

And I will definitely lose.

- You once said that you do not consider yourself a very talented athlete and that all your results are the result of a lot of hard work.

— It really is.

I know what talent is - I saw it many times on the example of those with whom I trained next to.

You involuntarily begin to think about this when you notice that people achieve their goals with much less effort than you yourself.

Is this one of the reasons for such an uneven career?

- I would say that in biathlon, few people manage to constantly stay in the top, even very talented ones.

For me, this is definitely a more complicated story.

When you start to work hard, the body does not always withstand.

Accordingly, failures begin.

Therefore, I sometimes rolled back from the main team not only to the IBU Cup, but even to the Russian Cup.

In some cases, it turned out to return quite quickly, in some - not, but it was a normal process, and not some special way.

- Do you still consider the victory in the pursuit race in 2016 at the World Cup in Östersund to be your main victory in your career?

I once said so, but over time I changed my mind.

Still, the relay victory at the 2017 Hochfilzen World Championships was more significant.

As well as the individual race won last year in Antholz.

It's just that the pursuit in Östersund happened at a time when I was still young and it seemed that this victory would be followed by a further and equally bright realization of myself in sports terms.

Everything turned out not so cloudless at all, there were many rather painful failures, so last year's triumph has a very special meaning for me.

A kind of proof that I was able not to give up after a difficult period for myself.

- Was the regret that this victory could no longer bring you the opportunity to go to the Olympics in Beijing was strong?

- Not.

And what should I be sorry about?

After analyzing everything that happened to me, I realized that somewhere I was simply not good enough.

It should have been better so that there were no controversial issues regarding my presence in the national team.

Our sport in this regard is like a shot.

If you didn’t pass the gauge, you need to regret not that the target didn’t close, but that you shot at the gauge, and not at the top ten.

So here: if you are on the verge of getting into the team, you must be aware that this “line” does not give absolutely no guarantees.

- When it became known in March last year that the season would be held in complete isolation, it seems to me that you should have weighed everything very well before deciding to continue your career.

- You see, what's the matter here ... After I didn’t get to the Olympics in Beijing, training became medicine for me to some extent.

This process has always cured me from all sorts of competitive failures, nervous overload, and so on.

In the spring, I went to a training camp in Sochi, I probably avoided all the mountains there, moreover, alone.

He went on some trips, cleared his head of everything he had experienced.

- You want to say that you didn’t think at all that you have a family, that you have a child who grows and matures without your participation.

It seems to me that with age, one way or another, everyone begins to ask themselves: is what they do worth the sacrifices they have to make.

- Speaking in general, an athlete, one way or another, constantly has to give up something.

And it does not begin at the moment when it comes to the end of a career, but much earlier.

It’s just that at first it’s some kind of entertainment with friends, the opportunity to study in the same mode in which peers do it, then things start to touch on more serious things.

I don’t know if it’s right to say this, but we have become a generation that has not had the easiest time in sports.

Not the case when you came to the national team, skimmed off all the cream and ended your career with peace of mind.

If I decided to stop performing, what would be the alternative?

Sitting at home and thinking about what you could do?

In the end, biathlon for us is not only a favorite thing, but also a job that allows us to provide for life.

I don’t know, maybe someday I will regret that I didn’t finish biathlon earlier, but now I won’t say that.

- Does the concept of the main start this season exist?

- There are specific competitions for which we will be evaluated, in terms of terms, this is February - March.

Therefore, in fact, in early December, no one was very worried about the results.

- While we were all in Demino, it was absolutely impossible not to think about the local ski marathon.

Did you have to run?

No, but I have heard.

This season I was invited to a marathon in Kirovo-Chepetsk, and, frankly, I would gladly go there at the end of March.

But I repeat: we have an incredibly tight schedule of starts in biathlon, we have a certain responsibility to the national team, to the teams of our regions, so it’s simply premature to think of something.